I just finished watching the New England Patriots defeat the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX. I lived in New England for six years and began cheering for the Patriots then. And the Super Bowl was played in Phoenix just down the street from where I live now, so that was kinda fun.
I guess you could say my team won. Or, at least, the team I cheer for won.
An interesting thing happens to me when a team that I cheer for wins a major sporting championship—this year is no different. I am instantly taken back to a conversation with a friend that occured almost 20 years ago.
Specifically, it was the mid-1990’s and the Nebraska Cornhuskers had just won the NCAA College Football Championship. After celebrating with our friends a short while after the final whistle, we got ready to leave while the party ended.
I recall vividly sitting in the passenger seat of my friend’s Honda Accord remarking how fun it was to win, but not sure knowing what to do next. I suggested that maybe we each head home to bed because we needed to get up early the next day for school. He agreed. And made this passing remark:
The emptiness of sports is most felt in victory.
I knew immediately what he meant. We were huge Nebraska Cornhusker fans—even though neither of us played on the team or even attended the school. But that didn’t matter. We invested a lot of resources into the season. The team’s schedule dictated ours. We spent money on t-shirts and hats and even some tickets during the year. We tied our emotions to the outcome of the games. And we argued relentlessly with anyone who disagreed with the superiority of our team.
We were highly invested in them and their success. Then, they won the big game and were crowned champion. We were excited for them and for us. But then, we returned home to go to bed. Life doesn’t stop for a national championship.
Up until this particular year, I had never personally experienced a championship. For one reason or another, we had always fallen short. In defeat, the emptiness is rarely felt because there is always next year, the thrill of the pursuit still remains. You can look back and debate what went wrong or what referee cost you a chance at the title. You can talk about the next season and what changes need to be made and how things will turn out better. You are left hoping and striving to defeat those that defeated you.
But when you win, the pursuit of the goal is removed. There is no one left to defeat. There is no obstacle left to overcome. Your team has reached the pinnacle of its sport. But it doesn’t change your life in any way. In fact, work begins again in the morning.
The emptiness of sports, you see, is most felt in victory.
But this is not a negative post to disparage athletics. I have competed in both individual and team sports my entire life. Through athletics, I have learned (and continue to learn) important life lessons about teamwork, discipline, strategy, perseverance, and the role that competition plays in our lives.
Also, this is not a post to disparage those who play sports or those who coach them—professional, collegiate, varsity, or younger. The goal of sports is to become the best all-around athlete or team that you can possibly become—and that progress is displayed on the field of play.
Congratulations to the New England Patriots. They have given their life and skill to the pursuit of a championship. And their hard work has paid off. No doubt, their accomplishment results in great satisfaction for them and everyone involved in the organization.
Instead, this is a post about the things we decide to pursue with our lives.
Because sometimes, it is difficult to notice the emptiness of these pursuits until we actually obtain them.
While we are striving, before we reach the top, the reward appears to be worth the effort and the investment. But this is not always the case.
For example, consider the pursuit of riches. When we don’t have them, but choose to pursue them, we do so because we think the solutions to many of our problems lie there. In money, we believe, we will find contentment, security, respect, confidence, or importance.
But the emptiness of riches is most felt in victory. Only when we obtain them, do we discover money does not bring nearly as much security and happiness as we expected.
Zig Ziglar said it this way, “Money won’t bring happiness, but everyone wants to find out for themselves.”
The same argument, I believe, could be made of material possessions, public accolades, fame, or early retirement. When we do not possess these, we desire them and faithfully invest our time and talent into them.
I often wonder if these pursuits also fall short of our greatest potential and greatest fulfillment. But maybe it is not until we finally achieve them that we recognize the emptiness of them.
What is the solution to this dilemma? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure.
But whenever I discover a pursuit that brings fulfillment upon its accomplishment, I feel called to invest more and more resources into it.
When I give my full attention to parenting well and feel the satisfaction that comes from it, I desire more of it. When I reach the end of a hard day at work knowing my focus was on other people, I feel fulfilled, and I desire more of it. When I generously invest money into causes I believe in and feel a sense of accomplishment, I desire to invest more money in that direction.
Ultimately, this is not a post about sports. This is a post about identifying which pursuits bring the greatest fulfillment in life. And finding the strength to invest our resources in them.
Image: Photo Credit: Cheryl Evans/azcentral sports
Rick says
I’m not sure that this is about sports at all… it seems to me that the difference is between watching other people live their lives, and participating in your own.
Christina @ Embracing Simple says
This is an interesting point you make! It has me realizing that half the fun of achieving goals is actually the journey itself! The excitement over trying to better ourselves and the possibility of meeting our dreams and what we’d like for our lives.
It can seem odd then to reach those victories and figure out how to replace the energy and motivation that was once directed toward our last goal/destination.
AJ says
I have coached youth sports for over 15 years, primarily soccer and basketball, both recreational and select, both boys and girls. When I started out back in 1995, I was absolutely coaching to win U7 soccer games … best players in the middle of the field, weaker players were basically orange cones that were played around. I have had 10-0 championship seasons, and I have had overmatched 0-10 teams. I thought the outcome of the sporting event was a reflection of me and my abilities to coach. I was wrong.
I have completely redefined what is “success” as a coach. It is my ability to teach and inspire all of my players to improve, to give their full, best, and honest efforts (whatever that is), and at the same time, to keep it fun … I often tell team parents that the outcome of games do not really matter, that the outcome is often a reflection of players at different levels of play (relative to their age) and that even select soccer (and basketball) is a recreational sport. The kids are playing the game for their own fun and enjoyment.
Somewhere along the way to becoming “super parents,” our generation has lost sight of the fact that sports are just recreation, whether we are playing them, watching them, or supporting college and professional teams playing them.
As an aside, my son attends Ohio State University and we enjoyed cheering them on to victory this year. But the reality is that I enjoyed and now value the father-son time that we spent together far, far more than the OSU national championship.
MattTheFool says
This post has so much truth in it. A lot of times we put so much energy into reaching goals (e.g. “winning”) that we completely forget to keep in front of us why we’re pursuing the victory. It’s as if we are headed off on a long drive for a vacation and completely forget to take in the sights along the way. Then we get to the end of the trip and realize that experiencing the journey is as much a part of life as the destination.
As my dad has frequently said when I (or a sibling) attempts to run from a problem in life: “Wherever you go, there you will be.” There is no victory–sports or otherwise–that will fundamentally change who we are. However, in every life event we can learn and learn to be content.
Thanks for this great post!
Gail says
Some of the goals we personally achieve can sometimes end in emptiness.
Being a spectator, not a participant, almost always ends in emptiness, whether our team wins or not, the movie ends the way we want or not, etc. We contributed nothing to the outcome, but spent time watching and money on tickets/memorabilia/valet parking. Naturally, a letdown at the end of the show, for me.
Julia Bloom says
Echoing others’ comments – it seems that the most fulfilling pursuits are the ones with no obvious finish line. As you mentioned, parenting is one. Any sort of relationship, pursuit of personal wholeness – any of those things I can imagine wanting to have invested in more when I am on my deathbed – there is no moment of arrival, no declaration of victory in these things, and that’s partly why we avoid them so much of the time. Process, journey, change – never stasis.
I’m working on a new song right now, and these lines seem apropos:
Hardness is exhilarating, mountaintops aren’t only why we climb
We climb to feel, we climb to keep moving
We climb for the pain to tell us we’re living
We pick ourselves back up each time we fall
Because we climb because we fall.
I always look forward to your posts, Joshua. Thanks for being faithful in your own journey.
Emily says
Thanks Josh.
I really enjoyed this post.
I have felt this feeling a lot of times and I appreciate as some of your other readers have that you have written about it. There is an emptiness that the world has not changed even though the goal has been reached.
Judy says
Barb—that sounds exhausting! I agree with you—we need to learn to sit where we are and rejoice in our current blessings.
Emily says
thanks josh for this post
Barb says
I once took a self-improvement course that advocated ALWAYS setting new goals because of this sense of flatness that comes after a victory. They wanted us to get high on the striving and keep the high going with ever more grandiose striving. Even at a young age, with relatively little experience of the world, I knew this was not an approach I could live with.
Now, when that feeling arrives, I sit with it to try to learn what it can teach me about what fills me up and what doesn’t. It’s always a bit of a surprise…
Emily says
Thanks for your comment Barb.
I appreciate your addition to the discussion. I am going to try to sit with it and do as you and josh recommend and focus on the truly fulfilling rather than the short highs with the following lows.
John says
Yep. There is so often a deflation (pun intended) after a season, or a theater production, or a holiday. Those glorious moments of success and completion pass and we’re left with…What?
As a child I hated Christmas, and other events, because I built them up in my imagination to be something far grander than they could ever be. Their failure to live up to my gradiouse expectations was a recipe for repeated disappointment.
And there is hope. And it fits well in Becoming Minimalist.
Hope, and please comes from the process and the being-ness and is dashed by the thingy-ness. Hope is not found in the trophy or even the victory; it is found in the people, the effort, and the striving.
(Go Pats)
John says
A classic passage:
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html
AJ says
Love this quote.